Why Elephants Weep: a Meditation

SO IT HAPPENED again. Tracy approached Bucket with the intent of reaching down and petting her silky coat (well, "silky" is too strong; perhaps merely "furry"), and Bucket fled as though pursued by banshees.

"What is it with these animals?" said Tracy. "We feed them, we shelter them, we get them medical care when they're sick, we let them push us around the bed -- why do they run away when we want just a little snuggle? I mean, where's the quid pro whatever?'

I was lollygagging during this event, and in that dreamy state I began to think about orders of magnitude. Bucket weighs 10 pounds and Tracy weighs 140. Therefore, Tracy is 14 times as heavy as the cat.

An animal 14 times as heavy as Tracy would weigh 1,960 pounds -- in other words, a small elephant. So try to imagine what it would be like to live in a household designed for and controlled by elephants.

Sometimes the elephants would have other elephants over, and all the elephants would make a lot of noise and sit on all the good soft furniture. Sometimes the elephants would turn on noisemaking devices, some of which would be attached to threatening tubes, while others might cause the elephants to move rhythmically although not always steadily around the room.

They would never bother to ask permission. The power dynamic would be clear. If they want to put all the food dishes in a machine that makes noise for 45 minutes and then take all the dishes out again -- we pay a lot of attention to food dishes, because our very existence depends on locating them -- then they do so. Period.

Sometimes the elephants make loud noises at each other, noises similar to the ones they make just before they hurl us off the table. It's hard to know what significance any of these noises have. But not all of them mean good things for us. That part we've figured out. THEN SOMETIMES THEY just go away, off to the elephants' graveyard, for all we know. They don't exactly leave us a note. It's peaceful without the elephants; on the other hand, our elephants are occasionally amusing and definitely in control of the victuals. Where have they gone? When will they come back? Is it anything we did?

Maybe it would be best to urinate on this soft place, just to show we have a sense of belonging.

But we like the elephants. We do. We have our own lives, our own concerns, but the elephants have in general been genial with us. There is precedent; there have been mutual exchanges of affection. We are not oblivious to their many kindnesses.

But they are so . . . big. Just huge. They could step on us; truth be told, they have stepped on us. Lucky for us they move so slowly, or we'd have had about 19 ribs broken. And the hairy one falls down sometimes too. That's alarming -- a ton of out-of-control elephants reeling across the kitchen. "SO WHAT I'M saying here," I said, not aware that I had ceased merely to think and had begun to speak as well, "is that we are unable to know whether you approach us in a spirit of love. We do not speak your language; your sluggardly movements are ambiguous. Maybe it's going to be time for the Box again."

I made my voice go high. "Not the box. Anything but the box! Not the small room with the needle man again! Please, please not that." I reverted to normal voice. "So that is what we fear. The trampling, the box, the noise, the whole elephant lifestyle. It's confusing. Trust really isn't the issue. I guess it's verification."

Tracy looked at me. "What?"

"I was speaking as Bucket might have spoken, had she the language skills."

"So the reference to the entire elephant lifestyle was . . . what exactly?"

"Don't walk toward me like that," I said, "lest I flee."

The eyes of the elephants fill with tears, and once more they stumble.